Scott Vrooman's Sun News Interview Is Painful And Hilarious (VIDEO)

In Scott Vrooman's case, it seems like all it took was a headline that indicated he was a proponent of de-funding the CBC -- despite the fact that the 813 words under it oozed of sarcasm and blatant comedy.

For whatever reason, Vrooman was on the network spewing similarly hilarious and sarcastic remarks, making for quite the awkward and painful interview.

"It's an honour to be here on the platform of Canada's foremost intellectual, Ezra Levant," he says to the anchor.

"I miss you guys down here. You're a Canadian institution. You're as Canadian as frozen apple pie."

Vrooman's answer to the first question, on whether the CBC should "trim the fat" and deal with cuts, wastes no time and blasts the interview off into uncomfortable humour.

"I'm sick of all this talk of trimming and cutting," he says. "We need to abolish the CBC. I don't think systems can be changed incrementally. You either get rid of them or let them control you. It's black or white, preferably white."

In the clip above, watch things get even worse as Vrooman "compliments" Sun News on their approach to the free market and then describe how he ranks cultures from best to worst.

On his YouTube page, Vrooman says Sun News took down the interview "once it started to get attention."

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Sun News History

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Controversy surrounding the Sun News Network began even before the network went on the air in April, 2011. The Globe and Mail reported in the summer of 2010 that CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein was under pressure from the Prime Minister's Office to resign, in order to pave a smooth path for Sun News to be granted a licence by the regulator. Finckenstein denied the allegations.

With concerns swirling about the possibility of a PMO-driven political agenda at Sun News, the activist site Avaaz launched "Stop Fox News North," a campaign to pressure the CRTC to deny a licence to the news network. The network responded by citing Avaaz's U.S. roots and noting that left-wing billionaire George Soros has contributed to the group, in an apparent effort to discredit the petition as a "U.S. import."

Future Sun News personality Ezra Levant went further than most in his criticism of Avaaz and its links to George Soros (pictured above). Levant suggested in a column that Soros, who is Jewish, aided the Germans in the Holocaust as a teenager. After receiving a letter from Soros' lawyers threatening to sue, the Sun newspapers ran a retraction.

Sun News was on the air for only about six weeks when its first major controversy erupted. The CRTC received a record 6,676 complaints from viewers after host Krista Erickson aggressively challenged dancer Margie Gillis over the issue of whether artists should receive taxpayers' money in the form of grants. The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council eventually ruled Erickson was within her rights to express her opinions during the interview.

Sun News has made the CBC's public funding a signature issue, repeatedly attacking the network for taking $1 billion per year in taxpayers' money while competing against private-sector broadcasters.
But the CBC is fighting back. It put out a press release noting that Quebecor, Sun's parent company, enjoyed $500 million in subsidies over five years, and argued that -- unlike the CBC -- it is not publicly accountable to taxpayers.

Ezra Levant got himself in trouble again in December, 2011, when he responded to Chiquita Bananas' declaration it wanted to avoid oil from the oil sands. "Chinga tu madre," Levant said to Chiquita -- a phrase that translates as "f--k your mother." The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council declared Levant's outburst a violation of ethics standards.

Canadian journalism reached an embarrassing nadir in the spring of 2012 when it emerged that a citizenship reaffirmation ceremony broadcast on Sun News had been partially staged. Six federal bureaucrats had posed as newly-sworn Canadians during the event that had been reportedly requested by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Kenney's office apologized to Sun News. Government officials later alleged Sun News was aware of the bureaucrats posing as new Canadians.

Sun News applied for a "mandatory carriage" licence in the fall of 2012 that would require cable and satellite operators to carry the network as part of their basic cable package. Though neither CBC News Network nor CTV News Channel currently enjoy mandatory carriage, they did when they first started out, as Sun News has pointed out.

Sun News reported in January, 2013, that it lost $17 million in 2012, due to weak revenue because the channel is only carried in 40 per cent of Canadian homes. Parent company Quebecor is saying the network will continue to lose money unless its request to the CRTC for mandatory carriage on basic cable is granted.
Pictured: Quebecor CEO Pierre-Karl Peladeau

Sun News personality and well-known right-wing pundit Ezra Levant issued a formal, on-air apology after a September, 2012, segment in which he declared that the Roma were not a race, and were rather "a shiftless group of hobos" who "rob people blind" and whose "chief economy is theft and begging."
The Toronto police reportedly even launched a hate-crimes investigation into the segment, at the request of a local Roma group.

In August 2013, the CRTC, Canada's telecom regulator, rejected Sun News' application for mandatory carriage. The network had asked the CRTC to make them a mandatory part of all basic cable services, arguing it would not survive financially without it.
Though the CRTC rejected the Sun News application, it also launched a review of the rules surrounding cable news networks. Among the possible outcomes are a realignment of channels so all news channels are grouped together on the dial, and the possibility of a "must-carry" order for Sun News, which would mean that all TV service providers would have to at least offer the network.
Pictured: CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais

On Friday, Feb. 13, 2015, Sun News went off the air, less than four years after its debut broadcast. Sun News personalities blamed the failure on the CRTC's decision not to grant the network mandatory carriage, and on cable companies' reluctance to give the network prominent placement on the dial, but analysts said the network's poor ratings and annual losses were the driving factor in the decision.